A new school year is underway in Philadelphia and we sent reporter Connie Langland to oberve the work of two teachers at two different schools. Gratz High School is a former public school that was turned into a charter school by the district. JacQueline Palmer has taught there for three years -- both before and after the change was made. We look into the classroom of Palmer to get an insight into the everyday life of a teacher in an urban school.....
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By Kyre Gottschalk»
When I was 16, I always thought by the time I was 25 I would have a full-blown successful career, own my own home, be married and perhaps even have a couple of kids. Well, I am 25 now and I recently lost my job, I am single, and I currently live in my father's basement.
I look at the people I'm connected with on Facebook and there seems to be a trend of engagements, marriage, and children. It's as though they have a look of success on their faces. They ran the age/success race and made it before the age of 30. They are the ones who have taken on the challenge and won. A part of me gets bitter when I see them smiling in their pictures. Talking about their new careers, showing off their brand new apartments or homes they just bought, hugging onto their spouse with delight, warmly smiling as they hold up their new born baby. I have to ask these acquaintances and friends, now what? Is it the end that matters or is it the journey?
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By Roz Warren»
When I was growing up in the 1960s, every house in my neighborhood had a telephone. It wasn't called a "land line." It was called "the telephone." It wasn't a smart phone. It was an imbecile. It didn't have call forwarding. Or call waiting. It couldn't take messages. And there was no caller ID. When the phone rang, you actually had to answer it to find out who was calling.
If you wanted to talk to a friend, you dialed her number. If she was there, she picked it up and said "Hello." If she wasn't home, or if her older sister was tying up the line, you were flat out of luck.
Sounds primitive, doesn't it?
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By Shannon Frost Greenstein»
I am 30 years old. Existentially, that's mind-blowing to me, because I was just 18 yesterday, I swear. Now, I am faced with a problem that is causing me increasing levels of stress as time passes. The problem is that I want to have a baby. The problem is that I'm getting older, relentlessly, and that raises a whole host of problems in achieving my goal. The problem is that, lacking the means to conjure an immediate embryo out of thin air, I'm not precisely sure how to proceed. All of the sudden, like a switch, evolutionary instincts have taken over, and I now have the urge to pass on
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By Joe Trinkle»
It was about a month ago, while I was sitting in a small coffee shop that I frequent on South Street, when the girl behind the counter, Lauren, finally got the nerve to ask me about all the books and flashcards I carry with me.
"Hey, can I ask you something?"
"Sure," I said, incorrectly expecting upon those words, as many men do, a romantic query.
"Why do you carry around all of those books? You don't seem like a student?"
I laughed in the way I do to show people I'm uncomfortable. And then I said, "No, not right now. But I am studying, I suppose."
"Oh, cool. Are you learning a language or something? It's just that, you know, you come in here a pretty regularly and a few of us, the baristas, have tried to figure out what you're studying. But you always have all these different books stacked up on the table. It's funny."
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